Sunday, 31 March 2013

Easter cheesecake

I know Easter time is associated with many flavours in
baking – spices, almonds, dried fruit etc as illustrated by Mr CC’s fine hot cross buns...but
let’s be honest, the dominant flavour for most of us at this time of year is
chocolate.

The cheesecake recipe comes from the latest in the series of
“30 best loved recipes” books, which features Bahlsen Choco Leibniz
biscuits. It intrigued me because the
cheesecake topping is so simple: just cream cheese, sugar and chocolate. Normally with non-bake cheesecakes there’s
some cream in there too. The absence of
cream made this a rich, dense almost truffle-y cheesecake.

As this was my celebration easter Sunday bake I jazzed up
the cheesecake with mini chocolate eggs and fluffy chicks. This type of fluffy chick has been around all
my life and – every year – I buy at least one box...and then only use about
three of the chicks. I put the rest in a
drawer or cupboard safe for next year, by which time I have forgotten where I
put them and buy another box. I suspect I
have most of the world’s production of small fluffy easter chicks stashed in my
kitchen cupboards; they are a veritable battery farm of easter chicks.

Using chocolate biscuits for the base meant that the base
felt and tasted far more integrated into the cheesecake. I liked the extra hit of chocolate; the only
downside was that the base was less solid than a normal cheesecake base. It was more delicious but difficult to cut
and plate nicely...there is always a price to pay in life, or as Curiosity
Killed The Cat sung so profoundly: there’s a bind for every kind.

Happy easter everyone!

Ingredients

For the
cheesecake base:

4 125g packets of Bahlsen Choco Leibniz biscuits – I used a
mix of milk and dark
100g unsalted butter, at room temperature

Start with the cheesecake base: Place a 21cm ring on the plate you wish to
serve the cheesecake from. An adjustable
dessert ring is perfect but a springform tin with the base removed will also
work. I like to line the ring with
baking paper to ensure I can de-tin it easily.

Start by making the base: blitz the biscuits in a food
processor until you have crumbs. It will
look like you have too much but it presses down pretty firm.

Blitz in the butter – no need to melt it if you’re doing it
in the food processor. If your crushing
the biscuits by hand i.e with the bag and rolling pin method, it’s easier to
melt the butter.

Press the crumbs onto the plate ensuring that you have an
even layer pushed right up to the edge of the mould.

Refrigerate while you make the topping.

Melt the chocolate – I favour short bursts in the microwave,
stir, another short burst until the chocolate is melted but if you prefer
melting in a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water that’s fine!

Let the chocolate cool for about five minutes.

In a large bowl beat together the cream cheese and icing
sugar.

Gradually beat in the melted and cooled chocolate until
evenly incorporated into the mix.

Spread the topping over the chilled biscuit base and
refrigerate for at least two hours.

Now make the ganache: heat the cream in a pan until just
starting to bubble.

Remove from the heat and break the chocolate into squares
and drop into the cream.

Leave to stand for a couple of minutes before stirring.

Keep stirring until all the chocolate has melted and is
incorporated.

Leave to cool (refrigerate if you’re in a hurry) and then
whisk to thicken – it needs quite a high speed to thicken it so best to use an
electric whisk if you have one. If it
doesn’t thicken enough to pipe, spoon into the piping bag and pop back in the
fridge for 5-10 minutes.

Pipe nest shapes on top of the cheesecake and put back in
the fridge.

Remove from the refrigerator about 15 minutes before serving
and decorate with the eggs and chicks.

that looks lovely CC! wish I had a slice. quick question - is the cheese part of the cake better than the chocolate truffle cheesecake you made for christmas? cos I made that, and it was divine. Had to hide it and eat it secretly, so i didn't have to share :)

Ooh, ooh, ooh - that looks scumdidliupmptious. Those little chicks look so cute and perky. I have one Easter chick I save year after year and he is looking very tired indeed. I have no idea where you buy new ones from - maybe I should just come and raid your cupboards.

Many thanks cc....it did the trick. I had some left over in the fridge so decided to have a little whisk lol. Hey presto, it worked !!!! Still a little loose but i reckon if i whisked a little longer it would have thickened some more. Thanks for the tip xx will deffo be doing it again x

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